Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Robotics software frameworks for multi-agent robotic systems development

Robotics is an area of research in which the paradigm of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) can prove to be highly useful. Multi-Agent Systems come in the form of cooperative robots in a team, sensor networks based on mobile robots, and robots in Intelligent Environments, to name but a few. However, the development of Multi-Agent Robotic Systems (MARS) still presents major challenges. Over the past decade, a high number of Robotics Software Frameworks (RSFs) have appeared which propose some solutions to the most recurrent problems in robotics. Some of these frameworks, such as ROS, YARP, OROCOS, ORCA, Open-RTM, and Open-RDK, possess certain characteristics and provide the basic infrastructure necessary for the development of MARS. The contribution of this work is the identification of such characteristics as well as the analysis of these frameworks in comparison with the general-purpose Multi-Agent System Frameworks (MASFs), such as JADE and Mobile-C.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-02Junta de Andalucía P06-TIC-2298Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-0386

Programming language abstractions for mobile code

Scala is a general-purpose programming language developed at EPFL. It combines the most important concepts found in object-oriented and functional languages. Scala is a statically typed language; in particular it features an advanced type system and supports local type inference. Furthermore it integrates well with the Java and .net platforms: their libraries are accessible without glue code and the Scala compiler generates code for both execution environments. The Scala programming language has several features that make it desirable as a language for distributed application programming. In particular, it supports first-class functions which are useful in relation with the notions of distributed scope and code mobility. In that context, the missing support for run-time types is one important drawback of the Java run-time environment as a target platform. This thesis focuses on the realisation of a new concept combining essential notions from the functional and distributed programming and implying the extension of the notion of lexical scoping to the distributed context. In short, we claim that the notion of lambda abstraction provides an elegant way for dealing with the dynamic rebinding of local references in a distributed execution environment. The key ideas exposed in this research work have been implemented in our Scala compiler. This helped us to evaluate the used techniques, in particular their impact on the reliability and the performance of distributed programs. So far, most research works related to the present subject have focused on functional programming languages, in particular on the ML language family

DATA DRIVEN INTELLIGENT AGENT NETWORKS FOR ADAPTIVE MONITORING AND CONTROL

To analyze the characteristics and predict the dynamic behaviors of complex systems over time, comprehensive research to enable the development of systems that can intelligently adapt to the evolving conditions and infer new knowledge with algorithms that are not predesigned is crucially needed. This dissertation research studies the integration of the techniques and methodologies resulted from the fields of pattern recognition, intelligent agents, artificial immune systems, and distributed computing platforms, to create technologies that can more accurately describe and control the dynamics of real-world complex systems. The need for such technologies is emerging in manufacturing, transportation, hazard mitigation, weather and climate prediction, homeland security, and emergency response. Motivated by the ability of mobile agents to dynamically incorporate additional computational and control algorithms into executing applications, mobile agent technology is employed in this research for the adaptive sensing and monitoring in a wireless sensor network. Mobile agents are software components that can travel from one computing platform to another in a network and carry programs and data states that are needed for performing the assigned tasks. To support the generation, migration, communication, and management of mobile monitoring agents, an embeddable mobile agent system (Mobile-C) is integrated with sensor nodes. Mobile monitoring agents visit distributed sensor nodes, read real-time sensor data, and perform anomaly detection using the equipped pattern recognition algorithms. The optimal control of agents is achieved by mimicking the adaptive immune response and the application of multi-objective optimization algorithms. The mobile agent approach provides potential to reduce the communication load and energy consumption in monitoring networks. The major research work of this dissertation project includes: (1) studying effective feature extraction methods for time series measurement data; (2) investigating the impact of the feature extraction methods and dissimilarity measures on the performance of pattern recognition; (3) researching the effects of environmental factors on the performance of pattern recognition; (4) integrating an embeddable mobile agent system with wireless sensor nodes; (5) optimizing agent generation and distribution using artificial immune system concept and multi-objective algorithms; (6) applying mobile agent technology and pattern recognition algorithms for adaptive structural health monitoring and driving cycle pattern recognition; (7) developing a web-based monitoring network to enable the visualization and analysis of real-time sensor data remotely. Techniques and algorithms developed in this dissertation project will contribute to research advances in networked distributed systems operating under changing environments

Remote service provision for connected homes.

This research study proposed to view a remote service delivery system from three distinct perspectives: connected home environments (user perspective), remote service delivery platform (service enabler), and remote service providers (service provider perspective); to establish a holistic view on the requirements of remote service provision to connected home environments. A reference architecture for remote service provision based on the proposed views has been devised, which provides built-in support for an “On-Demand” operating model and facilitate “Freedom of Choice” via different levels of interoperability

Analysis Of Aircraft Arrival Delay And Airport On-time Performance

While existing grid environments cater to specific needs of a particular user community, we need to go beyond them and consider general-purpose large-scale distributed systems consisting of large collections of heterogeneous computers and communication systems shared by a large user population with very diverse requirements. Coordination, matchmaking, and resource allocation are among the essential functions of large-scale distributed systems. Although deterministic approaches for coordination, matchmaking, and resource allocation have been well studied, they are not suitable for large-scale distributed systems due to the large-scale, the autonomy, and the dynamics of the systems. We have to seek for nondeterministic solutions for large-scale distributed systems. In this dissertation we describe our work on a coordination service, a matchmaking service, and a macro-economic resource allocation model for large-scale distributed systems. The coordination service coordinates the execution of complex tasks in a dynamic environment, the matchmaking service supports finding the appropriate resources for users, and the macro-economic resource allocation model allows a broker to mediate resource providers who want to maximize their revenues and resource consumers who want to get the best resources at the lowest possible price, with some global objectives, e.g., to maximize the resource utilization of the system

Ubiquitous Semantic Applications

As Semantic Web technology evolves many open areas emerge, which attract more research focus. In addition to quickly expanding Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud, various embeddable metadata formats (e.g. RDFa, microdata) are becoming more common. Corporations are already using existing Web of Data to create new technologies that were not possible before. Watson by IBM an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language can be a great example. On the other hand, ubiquitous devices that have a large number of sensors and integrated devices are becoming increasingly powerful and fully featured computing platforms in our pockets and homes. For many people smartphones and tablet computers have already replaced traditional computers as their window to the Internet and to the Web. Hence, the management and presentation of information that is useful to a user is a main requirement for today’s smartphones. And it is becoming extremely important to provide access to the emerging Web of Data from the ubiquitous devices. In this thesis we investigate how ubiquitous devices can interact with the Semantic Web. We discovered that there are five different approaches for bringing the Semantic Web to ubiquitous devices. We have outlined and discussed in detail existing challenges in implementing this approaches in section 1.2. We have described a conceptual framework for ubiquitous semantic applications in chapter 4. We distinguish three client approaches for accessing semantic data using ubiquitous devices depending on how much of the semantic data processing is performed on the device itself (thin, hybrid and fat clients). These are discussed in chapter 5 along with the solution to every related challenge. Two provider approaches (fat and hybrid) can be distinguished for exposing data from ubiquitous devices on the Semantic Web. These are discussed in chapter 6 along with the solution to every related challenge. We conclude our work with a discussion on each of the contributions of the thesis and propose future work for each of the discussed approach in chapter 7

Service Oriented Mobile Computing

La diffusione di concetti quali Pervasive e Mobile Computing introduce nell'ambito dei sistemi distribuiti due aspetti fondamentali: la mobilità dell'utente e l'interazione con l'ambiente circostante, favorite anche dal crescente utilizzo di dispositivi mobili dotati di connettività wireless come prodotti di consumo. Per estendere le funzionalità introdotte nell'ambito dei sistemi distribuiti dalle Architetture Orientate ai Servizi (SOA) e dal paradigma peer-to-peer anche a dispositivi dalle risorse limitate (in termini di capacità computazionale, memoria e batteria), è necessario disporre di un middleware leggero e progettato tenendo in considerazione tali caratteristiche. In questa tesi viene presentato NAM (Networked Autonomic Machine), un formalismo che descrive in modo esaustivo un sistema di questo tipo; si tratta di un modello teorico per la definizione di entità hardware e software in grado di condividere le proprie risorse in modo completamente altruistico. In particolare, il lavoro si concentra sulla definizione e gestione di un determinato tipo di risorse, i servizi, che possono essere offerti ed utilizzati da dispositivi mobili, mediante meccanismi di composizione e migrazione. NSAM (Networked Service-oriented Autonomic Machine) è una specializzazione di NAM per la condivisione di servizi in una rete peer-to-peer, ed è basato su tre concetti fondamentali: schemi di overlay, composizione dinamica di servizi e auto-configurazione dei peer. Nella tesi vengono presentate anche diverse attività applicative, che fanno riferimento all'utilizzo di due middleware sviluppati dal gruppo di Sistemi Distribuiti (DSG) dell'Università di Parma: SP2A (Service Oriented Peer-to-peer Architecture), framework per lo sviluppo di applicazioni distribuite attraverso la condivisione di risorse in una rete peer-to-peer, e Jxta-Soap che consente la condivisione di Web Services in una rete peer-to-peer JXTA. Le applicazioni realizzate spaziano dall'ambito della logistica, alla creazione di comunità per l'e-learning, all'Ambient Intelligence alla gestione delle emergenze, ed hanno come denominatore comune la creazione di reti eterogenee e la condivisione di risorse anche tra dispositivi mobili. Viene inoltre messo in evidenza come tali applicazioni possano essere ottimizzate mediante l'introduzione del framework NAM descritto, per consentire la condivisione di diversi tipi di risorse in modo efficiente e proattivo